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Google blog search misses us

In the process of writing my online review of Google's Blog Search (still being edited), I came across a truely disturbing development--which I hope is not a trend: Google is bypassing this blog! I did a search for one of yesterday's posts, and typed in the words "OK blog company pitch." It returned these results, featuring a link to the post (thanks Mike), but not the post itself. Same story with our other posts. Does this have to do with the position of this blog within BW Online, or quirks in our RSS feeds? Or is the quirk within Google blog search?

? End of Week 2 for Google Blog Search from Getting Granular: The DigitalGrit Blog

I wasn't going to post on this again, but I found this blog post in which BusinessWeek comments on the fact that their blog wasn't even picked up. Pretty funny, considering they're BUSINESSWEEK for heaven's sake!!! Tons of links back [Read More]

Tracked on September 23, 2005 04:52 PM

The Google blog search is using the site's feed to understand the content. The feed on this blog uses a shortened version of the full post text so Google will only be able to search on that abridged version.

The way to get around this would be to post a full version feed which would help both Google and many of your users who read their feeds offline.

Posted by: Andrew Marritt at September 21, 2005 08:24 AM

As I understand it, Google Blog Search indexes RSS feeds only, by monitoring weblogs.com. As your feed is minimalist, this is probably why they don't have the whole post. A nudge in the direction of full feeds, plus AdSense, perhaps?

Posted by: John (SYNTAGMA) at September 21, 2005 09:19 AM

It's not as if this blog is difficult to find.

Maybe the goal is to make all the easy to find stuff difficult to find and all the difficult stuff easy to find. Try loading up Blogspotting with all sorts of spammy content and get rich quick links and maybe Google will beat a path to your blog. Maybe a mystery blogger feature would get your Google ranking up higher. Try dressing up like a bunny rabbit and have Heather do a daily horoscope blog!

Best of luck trying to figure this all out.

Posted by: Jim Dermitt at September 21, 2005 09:34 AM

Hm... have you by any chance criticised Google's ban on CNET? Perhaps you got censored :-)

OK, just kidding ... the previous commenters gave you the real reason. Here's a collection of arguments and other posts on the full / partial feed issue:

http://www.zoliblog.com/blog/_archives/2005/9/14/1227123.html

Posted by: Zoli Erdos at September 21, 2005 09:46 AM

I'm going to use this blink. You can too.

http://www.blinkbits.com/blinks/blogspotting

Good luck trying to understand how the Google

thing works. Once you figure it all out, they will change something and you will need to figure it all out again, just when you thought you had it all figured out. Go figure! I really don't know. I

think you need a Ph.D to solve these mysteries of Google. It's like murder by numbers or something.

Posted by: Jim Dermitt at September 21, 2005 10:01 AM

Welcome to the sorry state of blog search. Google and others only index what's in your feed. Only Technorati and BlogPulse so far were able to tag a similar test I conducted last week because they crawl the full text of any blog post they unearth. Honestly, a lot of these engines are pulling the wool over people's eyes if they say they search the blogosphere in its entirety.

Posted by: Steve Rubel at September 21, 2005 10:07 AM

Just read your review on Google Blog Search and it's the best I've read so far. Succinct and balanced which is exactly what was needed amidst the plethora of reviews going on out there.

All the best.

Peter brady

Posted by: Peter Brady at September 22, 2005 03:02 PM

Yes, I find the google searches of blogs inadequate. Mine (mypartofnairobi.blogspot.com) only appreas as part of a comment I put on another blog! Bizarre.

Google needs to supercharge their spybots.

Posted by: paul merrill at September 23, 2005 07:26 AM

I posted this on my own blog (which, by the way, also wasn't picked up by Google!) -- but I found that Google's results tended to be sploggy, irrelevant and occasionally just plain weird. A search on 'marketing blog', which ideally would have served up our blog, came up with tons of irrelevant stuff and many blogs I've never heard of. (No Seth Godin, no Adverblog or AdRants...) A friend's blog came in at the top, which was somewhat comforting, at least. But a search on 'marketing' delivered absolutely nothing -- as if I'd made the word up!!! This result was repeated among friends who tried the same thing, but seem to be fixed hours later.

Keep in mind, though -- this is Google and it is only in Beta. I'm sure they'll get it right sooner, rather than later. If not, they'll probably just buy Technorati or something.